How do I stop spending so much time post processing?

The only solution is for the OP to reduce the impulse to post process so many images.

Several ways have been suggested to achieve this, all have merit;

- Shoot less. Fewer images to cull, or edit, or print.

- Cull more. Be less precious about what you keep and edit.

- Edit less. Be less precious about the final output for images that aren't destined to a fine art gallery

- Let the camera do the work. Shoot in Jpeg, use picture styles, and print directly from the jpeg.

- Let the camera and film processor do the work. As above, but use 3rd party printing. Moving to film will also force one to "Shoot Less" and eliminate any time in front of a PC.


P.S. this issue hits very close to home for me. In my earlier days with digital I found the process of post to be very enjoyable. I loved learning to use the tools and working files to be better than the camera.

For years now, I am in editing fatigue, and find less and less interest in it. You may notice that back in 2004-2008 I once posted images almost weekly. Sometimes daily. Now I post images a few times a year. I have a HUGE backlog of images taken of various subject matter that I am not taking the time to manage or process. All of my lack of posting is related to this, the images are there, have been taken and transferred to the PC, but I do not find the enjoyment required to take the time to edit and post. When I do, it is often haphazard, and don;t meet my standards. So posting becomes disappointing I do not put in the effort to do what needs to be done to make an image look good at the resolutions required fro internet viewing.

So Joey, it may be for different reasons, but I am in the same boat!

One thing I did was just take a decent P&S.

Fewer shots if I did take actual gear, but I rarely do that now.

In bridge, just do "good enough" then I batch in CS with a filter upload, done.

Thing is, 99.9% of people never care technically how good anything actually is. So, apply their standard.

You're actually just doing an old thing -- the customer is always right, so, obsess about that... Your pro customers, absolutely, nail it -- Photos you want to print, ditto. Everything else, let it pass......

Ah, one other tip I've been using for my son's Lacrosse -- don't bother cropping and framing to a size, just crop, done -- I tend to try for square, too, I don't sweat WB or exposure being the same in a set..... Cuts time.
https://midnightblue.s​mugmug.com …016-2017-Widener-Mens-LAX

But see what else I did? Just batch one B/W, or batch a grunge, give it some flavor visually. In other words, cheat.

TooManyShots wrote in post #18144604
And of course upgrade your computer with a SSD drive and 16gb+ RAM. It will speed up your post processing time by 50%, depending on what you have now.

I went down this road, it did not change my desire to sped time on processing. I like a problem I can throw money at, and this ended up not being one

nathancarter wrote in post #18144605
Most of the time, the bottleneck is me second-guessing myself.

....

Well said.

My point is they both need work because they both have equal weight. There are really no shortcuts if you are really concerned with quality. If quality isn't an issue then just batch everything at once and your done.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #18146279
"We" being an infinitesimal percentage of the whole that shot with film.

Two of you are clearly thus missing the point/suggestion being made WelshWizard.

How anyone can interpret the idea of reducing post processing time by suggesting finding space in the home/office to out fit an entire dark room, and spending days instead playing with chemicals?

The original suggestion has merit, and it is again what the vast majority of film shooters did for decades.

Sure Jake. I kept that in mind while making my comments. You are not considering that the small 'we' is in fact 'us'; the many people on this forum (and definitely the OP) who are not satisfied with the standard SOOC type deal. If an individual can't put the computer down to stop processing how do you expect him or her to be satisfied with lab prints? The very suggestion is myopic and flies equally with 'buy an instant camera and be done with it' or 'stop taking pictures'. A suggestion like that can only be made by someone who's birth into photography was digital or just didn't put more time in to formulate a more considerate response. If you read the OP it's clear that someone is reaching out for help and from where I sit it doesn't seem the kind of plea that deserves off topic quips.

nqjudo wrote in post #18146357
Sure Jake. I kept that in mind while making my comments. You are not considering that the small 'we' is in fact 'us'; the many people on this forum (and definitely the OP) who are not satisfied with the standard SOOC type deal. If an individual can't put the computer down to stop processing how do you expect him or her to be satisfied with lab prints? The very suggestion is myopic and flies equally with 'buy an instant camera and be done with it' or 'stop taking pictures'. A suggestion like that can only be made by someone who's birth into photography was digital or just didn't put more time in to formulate a more considerate response. If you read the OP it's clear that someone is reaching out for help and from where I sit it doesn't seem the kind of plea that deserves off topic quips.

Really? I didn't have a B&W darkroom in an old outside toilet where I spent hours dodging and burning?? Funny, I swore I did that? Had an old darkroom I used at work too ( British Telecom, they used to take large format photo's of the entire bank of call meters, process them onto microfiche, then the admin girls would read them and send out the bills, luxury, a large unused professional darkroom, fantastic until building services twigged what I was up to ).

The whole point of the suggestion was to get away from the perfection of processing and go to the 'that'll do' prints, if he's got OCD then the last thing to suggest would be a darkroom. And NOWHERE did anyone suggest he would be 'happy' with lab prints, the whole point was that it save processing them himself, and as it was out of his hands and he had no control over it, there wouldn't be any OCD. Your advice was to set up a load of presets and streamline his workflow? He's got OCD, if he does that he'll spend ages doing the pre sets too!

If you don't understand the point, ask, I don't understand why there have been so many insulting smart alec comments on threads this week to perfectly sensible comments????

nqjudo wrote in post #18146357
Sure Jake. I kept that in mind while making my comments. You are not considering that the small 'we' is in fact 'us'; the many people on this forum (and definitely the OP) who are not satisfied with the standard SOOC type deal. If an individual can't put the computer down to stop processing how do you expect him or her to be satisfied with lab prints?

Ok, yes, point taken.

That said, I took the the quip differently, but maybe that was just me. I saw the reply to come from the experience of having shot film and what went into it, not from a lack of knowledge of it.

There is a freedom that came with digital that most of us did not have with film.

Like most freedoms, it is mostly all positive. But it is not all positive. It can lead us to poor practices as well. Again, maybe I read too much into it, but the suggestion of film was IMHO pointing towards the liberal choices we now tend to make in our shooting given the liberation of digital from film. Film (tended) to impose a forced discipline.

One of the recurring things we see as digital photographers develop their skills and disciplines on the forum, are the statement in posts regarding reducing the number of shots taken, the timing vs. spray and pray, etc. Given the freedom to shoot high speed bursts and cheap memory cards, it is hard to get back the discipline that was once required when we had a few rolls with a few exposures on it, and were faced with sending it out, or hours/days in a dark room. And yet time and again we see the more experienced of us talking about doing just that. They have seen the trap of shooting too much too fast, and are using experience to reduce the effect of the "shooting is free" mentality.

Back to dark room, bringing it up actually thus is also on point, as a reminder of how hard this was, and why we shot less!

welshwizard1971 wrote in post #18146398
.... Your advice was to set up a load of presets and streamline his workflow? He's got OCD, if he does that he'll spend ages doing the pre sets too!

If you don't understand the point, ask, I don't understand why there have been so many insulting smart alec comments on threads this week to perfectly sensible comments????

My view is that you now have managed to both be disrespectful to each other in equal amounts. Let's call it even, and end that aspect of this thread here please.

There are many suggestions here. I would add one - do not take your camera gear to a couple of the next family outings or events and enjoy the events without being behind the camera. Seriously. It will not change your workflow from the processing time or culling requirements point of view, but it may help you enjoy these kinds of events that have started to affect your photography of them (that and the frustration with the photography that has started to affect your enjoyment of the event).

Give it a little rest and see if that helps you reconnect with the subject.

You can also try to challenge yourself on these kinds of shoots - choose to shoot in B&W only, or JPEG only or only shoot 10 images or something that might help you take a breath and prioritize the shot before you start clicking away.

"Candid" non-planned images of events are okay, but as a photographer, you can help create a story of the event by interacting with the subjects, the surroundings and capture more of the essence of the event and less of the sterile rendering of the history of the event. If you have a story to tell or a vision of the things that are important to you and the intended audience who will be viewing your work, it is much more engaging, intellectually and creatively, when you compose, shoot and process the images that tell that story.

Good luck, we all hit a rut here and there.

Kirk

welshwizard1971 wrote in post #18146398
Really? I didn't have a B&W darkroom in an old outside toilet where I spent hours dodging and burning?? Funny, I swore I did that? Had an old darkroom I used at work too ( British Telecom, they used to take large format photo's of the entire bank of call meters, process them onto microfiche, then the admin girls would read them and send out the bills, luxury, a large unused professional darkroom, fantastic until building services twigged what I was up to ).

The whole point of the suggestion was to get away from the perfection of processing and go to the 'that'll do' prints, if he's got OCD then the last thing to suggest would be a darkroom. And NOWHERE did anyone suggest he would be 'happy' with lab prints, the whole point was that it save processing them himself, and as it was out of his hands and he had no control over it, there wouldn't be any OCD. Your advice was to set up a load of presets and streamline his workflow? He's got OCD, if he does that he'll spend ages doing the pre sets too!

If you don't understand the point, ask, I don't understand why there have been so many insulting smart alec comments on threads this week to perfectly sensible comments????

The preset thing was to express what I do and not what the OP should do. It was part of a larger context. I also mentioned other things like minimizing the amount of images to process. It is a fact of digital processing. You have to choose your battles. In any case OCD is OCD. Take one outlet away and it will manifest itself somewhere else. It is tough to deal with and likely beyond the scope of this thread. As for your last paragraph I don't understand what you are attempting to express. I'm having difficulty with your structure and grammar so I can't respond. It is probably me. English is my 3rd language. Maybe your situation is similar? My apologies.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #18146419
My view is that you now have managed to both be disrespectful to each other in equal amounts. Let's call it even, and end that aspect of this thread here please.

Agreed. You beat me to my last submit. Maybe it's time to clean this thread up anyway?

MalVeauX wrote in post #18146255
Granted, I don't do that for photographs that I want to be more meaningful, those I shoot RAW. But when I know I don't need to do a lot of editing to get the results needed, I will switch to JPG to help reduce time spent editing, and also shoot smaller JPG sizes so I can even take that step out of editing too.

Very best,

Many years ago I tried raw processing. Having shot maybe 2000 each week for a few weeks I reverted back to jpegs and this was back in 2006 or 2007. I found that given the amount I shot my keeper rates were so high in jpeg that I didn't feel the 'need' to shoot raw.

Now this isn't a high-handed 'I can get it right in camera' attitude it was just a natural development of my skills. If we make enough mistakes that we learn from eventually getting it right comes naturally!

Today I shoot everything in jpegs. Weddings, social, sports etc. I too, reduce the jpeg file size, to get smaller files which whizz along nicely but give me a 10x8 or 12x16 print but I don't lose any sleep over the mistakes I make. Those mistakes get less and less with time and I spend almost zero time in PP.

I took this route for my own sanity and it has worked (for me anyway).

Interesting. I cannot even imagine NOT shooting in RAW.